DIARY BETWEEN WORLDS

CHAPTER 10

Women of My Lineage

My daughter was born early on a Thursday morning.

My waters broke.

I was very young then. I was twenty-two years old.

I remember standing there, trying to understand what was happening. No panic. No screaming.

I simply said:

“I think I’m giving birth.”

I already had my own doctor, and everything had been arranged in advance. There was also a midwife who was supposed to stay with me during the birth.

When I arrived at the hospital, I saw other women.

They were walking through the corridors, moaning, suffering, crying out in pain.

I watched them and wondered.

Because I was not in pain.

Later, they put me on an IV, and the pain slowly began to grow stronger.

Gradually.

In waves.

And at some point, I suddenly understood with absolute clarity:

It is happening now.

I climbed onto the delivery table by myself.

And I gave birth.

Everything happened quickly. Almost as if someone were guiding me through this passage.

And then came silence.

In that silence, I heard my daughter’s first cry.

Loud. Strong.

There was a will to live in that cry.

This was my daughter. My first child. My most beautiful girl. My beloved.

Later, my grandmother looked at me and said:

“Now I can stop worrying about you. Now you have become a woman.”

At the time, I did not fully understand what she meant.

I was twenty-two years old. I had just become a mother. And perhaps, back then, I thought that was all my grandmother meant.

But many years passed.

I began to dream about her.

In my dreams, my grandmother would return to me. She would give me books. Photographs.

And then I remembered her words again:

“Now you have become a woman.”

Only years later did I begin to understand them differently.

That day, it was not only my daughter who was born.

A new version of me was born as well. I became a mother.

And with that came another kind of love – a love that must not only be received, but also learned to be passed on.

From woman to woman.

From mother to daughter.

From generation to generation.

And only now am I beginning to understand why it was my grandmother who said those words to me.

Perhaps she was speaking about more than motherhood.

There were women before me.

My grandmother.

My mother.

And those who came before them.

Each of them had her own life.

Her own pain.

Her own losses.

Her own strength.

Her own love.

Some things ended with them.

But other things continued to live.

In memories.

In words.

In books.

In photographs.

In dreams. In children.

I do not know how many generations came before me, or how many women’s hands held this invisible thread.

But on that Thursday, it came into my hands.

My daughter was born.

And I took my place among the women of my lineage.